Learning from low income countries: what are the lessons?: Trained medical assistants can successfully do work of doctors

EDITOR—The West might well learn from Tanzania, which in the early 1970s invited the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, to train experienced medical assistants to do nearly all the things normally reserved for qualified doctors. The teaching was on a problem solving basis; each teacher had just two or three students for their three months. There would …